Onward Nation

America's best podcast for learning how today's top business owners Think, Act, & Achieve. Onward Nation is a five-day-a-week podcast hosted by Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI. Business owners share the most influential lessons learned throughout their careers, including insights into their daily habits, their most vital priorities that have contributed to their business and personal success, and the most challenging time or situation that could have devastated or even ruined their businesses or careers. Business owners share their "recipes for success" including those systems they wish they had put into practice inside their business when first starting out. Each episode concludes with guests sharing two or three practical and tactical strategies they would recommend to brand new business owners in order to best ensure success in their new business and careers. Onward Nation provides business owners with the strategies and tactical step-by-step "recipe" that will help anyone make their business more systematic, predictable, measurable, and repeatable.

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Hundreds of thousands of business students have learned about marketing from Michael Solomon’s 30+ books, including “Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being” -- the most widely used book on the subject in the world. He is a professor of marketing, keynote speaker, and an advisor to global clients in leading industries on marketing strategies to make them more consumer-centric. He regularly appears on television shows including The Today Show, Good Morning America, and CNN to comment on consumer issues, and he is frequently quoted in major media outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, Adweek, and Time. And today...we’re going to dive deep into Michael’s latest book entitled, “Marketers, Tear Down These Walls! Liberating the Postmodern Consumer.”

What you'll learn about in this episode:

Why it’s not about what you buy, it’s about why you buy

How to succeed with your marketing in today’s super competitive marketplace

Why storytelling is vital to a brand’s success

Why your deliverable is not about the attribute of your brand, but rather the benefits

How Michael selected the title of his new book, “Marketers, Tear Down These Walls! Liberating the Postmodern Consumer”

How consumers are no longer confined to traditional categories

Why you shouldn’t define your business in terms of how you see it, but how your customer sees it

Why your best employees are likely your best customers

Marketing to your customer vs. marketing with your customer

How the best suggestions for new product modifications come from your lead customers

How authenticity is a key component to break down the barrier between the company and the consumer

Our special encore guest today is Henry DeVries. Henry is a book publisher, bestselling author, Forbes.com columnist, and professional speaker. He is an expert on helping people close more sales by teaching them how to persuade with stories on how they took a client from mess to success. In 2014, he founded Indie Books International, the marketing with a book and speech company. Now...you may remember Henry and the wisdom he shared during Episode 433. If you haven’t listened to, studied, and applied all he shared during our first interview...I highly encourage you to add Episode 433 to your list of vital priorities.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

How powerful it can be when you get the story right

The three characters that you have to put into a story

Why people remember stories — not lectures

Why it’s getting tougher and tougher to get really good people to join your company

What to do if you want employees to follow core values

How it all comes back to business and storytelling

The #1 marketing tool and the #1 marketing strategy

The eight great stories that humans are hardwired for

The four magic words of the English language

The importance of creating a stream and a pipeline

Ways to contact Henry:

Paola Girotti is the founder and owner of Sugarmoon, a sugaring business with three salons, take-home sugaring and organic body care product lines, and the Sugarmoon training academy. She spent 10 years growing her successful brand — and then four years fighting — and winning — a trademark battle dispute that almost robbed her of the Sugarmoon name. I am so excited for this conversation, Onward Nation because Paola is going to share some of the lessons learned from the experience and her big plans for the future.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

The importance of protecting your brand name and slogans

The benefits of being an early-riser

Why you need to be flexible and adaptable to change

Why it’s vital to have a plan for growth in place

Why it’s important to align yourself with people who have gone through what you’re going through

Why you need to recognize what you need from a financial perspective

Why you need to put together a strong leadership team, sooner rather than later

The importance of having the right people in place on your team

The value of having a good strategic plan when starting your business

Ways to contact Paola:

Jeff Rohrs serves as chief marketing officer for Yext, the leading Digital Knowledge Management platform that gives companies control over their customer-critical facts across the digital universe. His first book, “Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers”, has been lauded by marketers and executives as a must-read. Prior to joining Yext, Jeff served as Vice President of Marketing Insights for Salesforce and ExactTarget.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

How Jeffrey’s vision for digital research coincided with—and was enhanced by—Morgan Stewart, founder and CEO of Trendline Interactive

Why audiences can be built as a proprietary marketing asset, as well as the responsibilities of growing them from such a foundation

How today’s social media channels, like Instagram, are constantly shifting

How to target your most loyal advocates and amplifiers as these shifts happen, assuring you’re never too far from your most valuable customers

Why audience management, now, is a core marketing responsibility, as well as the impact of public relations in our socially connected digital landscape

Why email is the “secret sauce” of any digital marketing campaign, and why Jeffrey uses it as a home base to re-acquire consumers lost in the ever-shifting digital world

My special, encore guest today is Misty Lown. Misty is the founder, president and energized force behind More Than Just Great Dancing. Her accomplishments in giving back to the community are on a scale seldom seen by small businesses owners. Her studio, Misty’s Dance Unlimited, founded in 1998 and named a “Top 50 Studios in the Nation” by Dance Spirit Magazine, has provided over $200,000 in combined cash and studio scholarships for young women and she is the founder of the “A Chance to Dance Foundation.” Misty is also the author of the bestselling book, “One Small Yes: Small Decisions that Lead to Big Results.” You may remember Misty and the wisdom she shared during Episodes 80 and 544. If you haven’t listened to, studied, and applied all Misty shared during our first interview...I highly encourage you to add Episodes 80 and 544 to your list of vital priorities.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

How Misty’s brand new international performing arts center came to be

How finding a mentor who aligned with her values has helped Misty to grow

The value of moving your energy away from day-to-day operations into more of a strategic role

How Misty discovered that she was the biggest constraint to the growth of her business

The importance of building up your team to take on more responsibility

How Misty defines success and how that’s changed over the last 20 years

Why you need to be fully present wherever you are

The value of building something that you can live with

Why you need to define how fast and how hard you want to go to get to the next level

Ways to contact Misty:

Glenn Elliott is the founder of Reward Gateway, a world leader in integrated employee engagement technology with more than 1,800 clients worldwide. His new book, “Build it: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement,” which he co-authored with Debra Corey, highlights practical improvements that organizations can make to build a highly engaged company culture.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

How good founders know instinctively what the market needs to be successful

Why you always need to keep your team under constant review

How you shouldn’t hire people for what they’ve done in the past but rather what they’ll do in the future

Why Glenn and his co-author, Deborah, decided to write the book “Build it: The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement”

Some of the ways that companies are disengaging employees

How the path to better engagement is different for every organization

The importance of helping people develop their skills

How honesty and transparency can help you be successful at managing employee engagement

Our special encore guest today is Ace Chapman. Ace bought his first business when he was 19 years old. It was an online stock market simulator called CoolWallStreet. After selling it, and seeing the benefits in buying a business over starting one, he caught the business buying bug. Since then he has bought and sold over 40 businesses and has helped his clients all over the world buy companies. Now...you may remember Ace and the wisdom he shared during Episode 561. If you haven’t listened to, studied, and applied all he shared during our first interview...I highly encourage you to add Episode 561 to your list of vital priorities.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

Ace’s 19 years of success since his first successful venture at age 19, when he got involved in the technique of selling businesses professionally

The brief history of purchasing small Internet businesses and what it can show us about the art of buying mature entities

A behind-the-scenes look at private equity firms, as well as how to leverage a budding infrastructure with future potential

How to find deals when you can’t compete in your area (including the ins and outs of finding lucrative opportunities in international business)

Ace’s private equity partner program, which thrives on progressive financing options designed to give an earn-out based upon funding deals

The intricacies of nurturing your business’ “secret sauce,” or unique strength and the importance of making these strengths approachable—so as to not alienate, and push away, prospective buyers

How to put yourself in the shoes of the customer in today’s business-selling world, as well as the power of catering to Corporate America

Leveraging the entrepreneur mindset, wherein startup owners might be a difficult sell, overall, due to their independence and need to nurture something entirely their own

How to establish a legacy for your business and how to conduct your due diligence while your prospective buyers do theirs

Good Morning Onward Nation…I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation. And today’s episode is going to be a solocast…where it’s just you and me exploring a topic at some real depth — something helpful — so you can build and scale your business. So let’s dive in.

Much has changed since I wrote The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization in 2009.

Google now has a longer and more complicated recipe of factors it uses to rank you and your competitors as you attempt to earn the attention of your prospects and customers.

And many of the factors within Google’s list are not properly setup within the typical small business website.

That means fewer leads and perhaps less opportunity to generate higher sales.

All of which makes it important — for you as the business owner — to know some of the fundamentals to SEO. Not so you can do the work — but so you can establish expectations for your team — and then audit their results.

So for today’s solocast — I am going to share with you what is, in my opinion, one of the biggest, most expensive money draining mistakes business owners make. And that mistake is being too passive regarding the amount of traffic the website for their core business is attracting. And that number should be 60 percent of your total traffic — so 60 percent, Onward Nation, of your website’s traffic should be coming from organic search — a combination of Google, Bing, and other search related sources.

Jason Hsiao is the co-founder and chief video officer of Animoto, an award-winning online video maker that makes it easy for anyone to create professional-quality marketing videos. Animoto is a certified partner with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the Small Business Administration and give it unique insight into the changing social media and business landscape -- which may be why more than 1-million businesses around the world are already using Animoto to create marketing videos. Prior to founding Animoto, Jason was a producer for MTV Networks and Comedy Central.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

Why all businesses are trying to stand out on social media with video

How video is becoming the preferred way that people want to consume information

Why you should think of video as a form of communication

The method to use to come up with video topics

How social media has been a game-changer for small businesses

Why video is a great investment

Why you need to be aware of how you approach the small things in life

The importance of surrounding yourself with people who actually get stuff done

David C. Baker is an author, speaker, and advisor to entrepreneurial creatives worldwide. He has written 5 books, advised 900+ firms, and keynoted conferences in 30+ countries. His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and Inc. Magazine. He lives in Nashville, TN. His work has also been featured in the NY Times, where he was referred to as the expert’s expert.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

David’s history approaching U.S. Businesses after arriving in America at age 18 and the foundation upon which he’s build a legacy: an intense desire to learn and the bravery to start an agency with self-taught business approaches

The secret behind creating something from nothing and how David’s approach to risk-taking thrives on calculated spontaneity

How the challenges of an entrepreneur’s “professional DNA” manifest in multi-project tackling

The pitfalls of having multiple great ideas and why it’s important to divide your time wisely

The importance of focusing on several service options you can provide extraordinarily well

David’s idea-decision principal: saying “No” to most distractions

The pitfall of fear: Why entrepreneurs feel the need to constantly reinvent to avoid starving

David’s most valuable habit, which is to keep developing his own insight

The art of embracing problems as the chance to create new solutions—and how to make efficiency a constant goal

The cycle of learning, and why it’s important to put aside client work every so often to pursue education

How to decide when it’s time to reinvent yourself, and surviving the mental tug of what-if’s which arise from leaving old projects

Michael Stallard is a former Wall Street executive who left the Street 15 years ago to found the Connection Culture Group, a leadership training firm and focuses on improving workplace cultures. He’s a keynote speaker and expert on how effective leaders boost human connection in cultures to improve the health and performance of individuals and organizations. Michael is also the author of two books, "Connection Culture" and "Fired Up or Burned Out.”

What you'll learn about in this episode:

The story of how Michael became interested in culture

How having more human connection in your life can be beneficial to your health

The metrics that are used to define levels of loneliness

How we can be so focused on chasing money and power that we crowd out time for relationships that really matter

The benefits of using social media to establish offline connections

The power of having face-to-face connections

Why, as a leader, it’s vital to care about both people and results

Why you need to be intentional about achieving both task AND relationship excellence

Why it’s important to identify a specific client problem to solve

Why you need to listen closely to what your clients are saying

Ways to contact Michael:

After traveling the world, David Osborn returned home to Austin, Texas broke and unemployed...at the age of 26. Though his travels may not have yielded wealth, they instilled the key motivation that he brings to every part of his life -- to create it freedom. David began to test his entrepreneurial merits and the results were nothing short of remarkable. In less than 10 years, David built one of the top real estate brokerages in the world, founded over 50 companies, and became the best selling author of “Miracle Morning Millionaires” with co-author, Hal Elrod.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

How saying “yes” to taking a trip around the world turned into a valuable learning experience for David

Why it’s a bigger risk to NOT take risks

How David’s book “Wealth Can’t Wait” & “Miracle Morning Millionaires” came about